The U.S. Commerce Department’s
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) newest
high-tech climate monitoring stations, part of a nationwide effort
to better track America’s temperature and precipitation trends,
are now operating in Alamo and Muleshoe, Texas.

The stations are part of NOAA’s
U.S. Climate Reference Network (CRN), and are designed to provide
high quality climate data that can be used by U.S. decision makers
working on programs impacted by climate variability and change.

“NOAA's
CRN is an example of the tools needed to address the five overarching
goals of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. The CRN is a step
toward providing observations to improve the understanding of our
climate system and our climate modeling capabilities, and ultimately
reduce uncertainties that challenge our scientists and stakeholders,”
said Dr. James R. Mahoney,
assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, NOAA’s
deputy administrator.

“The new network will inject as
much concrete data as possible about what the climate is doing now,
and how it will be impacted in the future,” said Tom Karl, director
of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville,
N.C. Karl conceived the CRN system and is one of the world’s
leading experts on climate change.

NOAA’s Geostationary Operational
Environmental Satellites play a key role relaying data from the ground-based
stations to NCDC, which posts the observations online.

Bruce Baker, CRN chief scientist, said
the network will integrate with other existing observation systems
and “close any open gaps in data collection and verify the accuracy
of the data.” Additional deployments are planned for the next
two years. NOAA officials said a total of 100 stations are planned
throughout the rest of the nation by 2006.

The agency also is the nation’s
primary source of space-based meteorological and climate data. It
operates the nation’s environmental satellites, which are used
for weather and ocean observation and forecasting, climate monitoring
and other environmental applications, including sea-surface temperature,
fire detection and ozone monitoring.

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic
security and national safety through the prediction and research of
weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship
of the nation’s coastal and marine resources.